By day Chris Gavin creates TV commercials, promos and web films. But in his free time he turns to his own short films, such as TXT Island, described as "A typographical tale of epic misadventure." His current project is The Futura Gold, an animated work created entirely with the Futura typeface. Released as a series of short episodes, story idea suggestions from viewers are welcomed. For the origin of this kind of animation, check out the work of Émile Cohl.

Sculptor Joshua Harker hit a home run with his first Kickstarter project, Crania Anatomica Filigre: Me to You, which he claims is now the site's most-funded sculpture project. The filigreed, 3D printed skull was admittedly not without its charms.

The new iTunes 11 is out Today. It has integrated iCloud, new edge-to-edge design, better views and much better minimized player. If the design of iTunes 11 is any indication of the new OSX look coming out of Sir Sir Jony Ive I have high hopes for for 10.9.

You might want to have the sound turned down a notch before playing this brief video, which provides a tantalizing look at upcoming Photoshop CS6 functionality. It's expected that the features flying by in the clip will form an integral part of the Adobe Create Now Live event scheduled for December 11. The bad news for many Photoshop users is that the new features are expected to be available only for Creative Cloud subscribers.

While some people online stop at overall market share when comparing products, I am more concerned with their usage in the real world. I decided to look at sales numbers for Android and iOS devices in correlation with both their online market share and Black Friday sales numbers to see how they stacked up. What I found was rather interesting.

From October 2011 through September 2012, the combined net profit of Microsoft, Google, eBay, Yahoo, Facebook and Amazon was $34.4 billion. Apple alone made $7 billion more. In the same period, Dell, Asus, Intel, Acer, IBM, Lenovo and HP, i.e. virtually the entire PC industry, made $19.3 billion or less than half of Apple’s profit. Seeing these numbers, it is no surprise that, despite its recent dip, Apple is still the most valuable public company in the world. All its recent shortcomings notwithstanding, Apple’s business remains incredibly profitable.

New York City-based Tien-Min Liao set out on a novel typographic experiment — to explore the relationship between uppercase and lowercase letters via the transformations between them. To that end she painted shapes on one or more of her hands, drew a letter and then modified the gesture to change the case. I've included a few examples below, with more available on Tien-Min Liao's Behance profile.

While our digital tools have acquired an astonishing sophistication, it's hard to imagine a future in which the fundamental humanity of the hand-drawn line has lost its ability to move us. The CD accompaning the latest IdN Magazine — Interactive Design: Perfecting those Air to Surface Missiles — celebrates the place of traditional techniques within contemporary motion graphics by assembling 23 current examples from 21 artists. The trailer above provides a sense of what's on the almost two-hour CD, which is included with the magazine or can be purchased separately. You'll find a sampling from the magazine below.

And the salary guides just keep on coming. First it was the AIGA|Aquent Survey of Design Salaries, followed last week by the Paylandia Salary Guide. Coroflot, the portfolio hosting site, has now released the latest iteration of its annual Design Salary Guide. What makes this different from the others is that the data is submitted by designers worldwide. In fact, you'll need to fill out a short form to submit your own salary information to have access to the detailed results.